


The Worst Pain

by fangirlingingeneralidk



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ALL the tags, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Insertable, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluffy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2018-12-23 13:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11990652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirlingingeneralidk/pseuds/fangirlingingeneralidk
Summary: Responding to a distress call, Ten and Rose are captured. What do these aliens want from them?





	1. Capture

The Doctor looked at Rose. "Where'll we go this time?"

"It's your turn, mate," she told him, laughing.

"Ooooh, is it?" He preened for her amusement. "In that case, I say we head for-"

An alarm on the console beeped. "That," he finished, pointing at the accompanying blinking light. "Distress call! What you say we have a bit of a look? Back in time for tea."

They grinned at each other. He flipped a switch and set the TARDIS in motion. "Dangerous?" Rose asked, doing that smile with her tongue she knew this regeneration had copied from her.

"Oh yes!" he said, and held out his arm. She laughed at him, but took it graciously as the TARDIS landed. He walked her to the door, then stepped through.

_Fwit!_ he heard, and then felt something pierce his neck. He reached for it. A dart. The world was getting fuzzy, but he held on to one thought.

_Rose!_ But he heard another _fwit_ and then a thud. A second later, his body made another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very short chapter; the others are longer.


	2. Meeting

The Doctor awoke groggily. The first thing he was aware of was that his trench, jacket, and shirt had been stripped from him; he was bare to the waist. Then he noticed the IV leading into his arm, and finally he realized he was hanging by his arms from the ceiling in chains.

"That's odd," he muttered. He looked around the room, but it was bare except for the door and a small drain below him. He groaned when he caught sight of the latter.

"Now that's really just unpleasant," he complained.

"I'm sorry you think so," said a voice as the door opened. Someone walked in. It was a humanoid alien that would not have looked out of place on Earth-or Gallifrey, for that matter. Yet somehow he sensed this being was neither Time Lord nor terrestrial.

"Hullo," he said with as much dignity as he could muster, given his situation. "And who might you be?"

"I am Delta-Ten-Three-Nine," he was told, "but you may refer to me as Del. There is no other Delta at this facility."

"Right then, that brings us to my next question: Where exactly am I?" He tipped his head at Del. "And why...has my sense of time gone wonky?"

"Ah." Del smiled. "Time distortion field. We've hosted Time Lords before, and we find it useful to prevent you from obtaining any knowledge other than that which we impart to you."

"You've hosted Time Lords?" the Doctor repeated, forgetting for a moment that his first question had not been answered.

"Oh, long ago," said Del. He grinned; the expression didn't quite fit his face. "That is why we were so pleased to locate _you_ , Doctor."

"Why? What d'you need Time Lords for?" he demanded.

"Research." Del indicated the IV he'd noticed before. "You see, my people are scientists. Our name translates best as 'Learners.' We devote our lives to the study of the universe, including other species. When we had Time Lords to study, we learned of your exact nutritional needs. That feed will give you precisely what you require, with no waste at all."

"Handy," murmured the Doctor, impressed despite himself.

"Thank you." Del bowed his head.

The Doctor stretched his back and rolled his neck. "Now, Del, for the most important question-"

"Why have we brought you here," Del completed.

"What have you done with Rose?" The Doctor's voice hardened. It was marvelous how imposing he could be, even half-naked and chained to the ceiling. The Oncoming Storm had arrived.

"The human you travel with is unharmed," said Del, perhaps not as calmly as he would have liked. He regained his composure quickly. "Miss Tyler is our bargaining chip. The Learners have been observing you for some time, Doctor. That is how we knew you could be lured here by nothing more than a simple distress signal. Your trouble has always been that you care too deeply. Rose, as you call her, will be perfectly fine so long as you cooperate. She is being held elsewhere, in a secure location outside the time distortion field. She is being treated well, but her fate is in your hands. We believe you will be inclined to be agreeable knowing misbehavior would lead to consequences for Miss Tyler. Is this deduction correct?"

The Doctor breathed deeply. If the alien could be believed, Rose was okay. Everything would be alright. "Yes," he admitted.

Del smiled broadly and again there was something wrong about it. "To business, then. You are no doubt asking yourself many questions about your role here."

The Doctor shrugged as best as he could. "I s'pose so, yeah. Care to enlighten a fellow?"

"When we had Time Lord subjects, we studied many things. In fact, we gathered information on nearly every topic we wanted to know about. Binary heart system? Brilliant! But we hit a snag with regeneration. Eventually we ran out of subjects."

"They died, you mean," the Doctor spat, furious. "You killed them in your lab experiments. Treated them like rats, but you got your precious results."

Del shrugged indifferently. "If you'd like. Then came the Time War, and the Learners were forced to retreat. We lost many valuable specimens."

"Living beings," the Doctor added coldly.

"And we thought we'd never have the chance to complete our study of Time Lord physiology and psychology," Del continued. "Imagine our relief when we heard of a lone survivor!"

"Bully for you. You'll excuse me if I seem unenthusiastic." He didn't mention there had been times when he had regretted survival.

"So now, Doctor, you will have the honor of helping the Learners complete our study by giving us one last piece of information about Time Lords."

"Only one? And what's that?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"Tolerance for pain."


	3. The First

"Torture. That's… not very nice, but not entirely unexpected," the Doctor admitted.

"Now, just to make it clear," said Del, ignoring him, "if we see so much as a spark of regeneration energy, Miss Tyler will suffer the consequences. Time Lords are capable of consciously withholding regeneration, yes? The Learners do not wish for the experiment to be muddled by unexpected healing."

"'Course not. Can't have that." He tried to say it lightly, but his voice shook at the thought of Rose paying for his mistake. It was possible to hold back regeneration, but it was a natural biological process, so stopping it was akin to holding one's breath to the point of loss of consciousness. Within the realms of possibility, but tricky. It would require constant attention once he got to that point, and if he slipped up for a second - he couldn't.

"Shall we begin, then?" Del smiled again, and this time it was clear what was wrong with it. It was a torturer's smile. Cold and unfeeling. Scientific detachment.

"Tell me, Del," said the Doctor, striving for casualness as two new Learners came into the room, "where are you from?"

The first of the newcomers looked to Del. He carried something that looked dreadfully like a whip. Del nodded. "Proceed, Iota-Eight-Five-Four."

Iota-854 walked behind the Doctor, out of his line of sight. The Doctor's spine tensed. "Aren't you going to-"

The lash came down. It tore into the skin on his back, and he hissed as all the breath was forced out of his body. He inhaled sharply. "-answer the question?"

"Iota-Eight-Four-Three?" prompted Del. The second Learner nodded and took notes on the clipboard he carried.

"Well? What pl-" This time he didn't even get to finish the word he was in middle of. The strike drew blood, and it trickled down his back and soaked into his trousers. The Doctor took a moment longer, breathing deeply for a few seconds. "What planet are you from?"

"Persistent," noted Del, and Iota-843 jotted that down. "Well, Doctor, I can't see how that is pertinent information to you at this time."

"No, I can't imagine you can," agreed the Doctor, though his teeth were gritted and his torso braced for another attack. "You see-"

And it came, and he gasped-

"I'm just curious. Like you, I suppose, only-" _lash, gasp, swallow_ \- "the comparison is distasteful, I admit."

"Curious?" Del repeated. "Now that is… curious."

"Ah, but you haven't answered the question." What he could see of his trousers was slowly getting redder; his back stung, but he would not cry out.

"If you must know, the Learners' planet of origin is-"

But the Doctor never heard Del's response, because at that moment Iota-854's whip sliced down his back at a slightly diagonal angle, intersecting previous lash marks and drawing the first scream. It drowned Del out quite effectively. Iota-843 scribbled excitedly.

The Doctor's vision had specks of black in it for a moment before he regained his senses. He swallowed hard, fighting another scream, and then said, "You were saying?"

Del eyed him. "Impressive," he allowed. "Doctor, would you say that you are a… _typical_ example of your kind?"

"Hardly matters, does it?" he deflected. Iota-854 raised his arm again in the Doctor's peripheral vision; he winced and soldiered on. "Seeing as I'm the only relevant data source."

"You have a point there," Del said, and then paused as the Doctor screamed again. "I merely wondered if all Time Lords were this flippant when facing a scenario like this, or if your cheek is unique."

"Unique cheek, that's me all over," said the Doctor with a slightly mad grin. "Got a ring to it. I ought to get that on a T-shirt."

He threw back his head and howled as Iota-854 drew another line of blood across his battered back. Without making a conscious decision to do anything of the sort, he arched his back away from the source of the pain.

Abruptly, Del snapped his fingers. "That will be all for this session." The Iotas filed out of the room. "Until next time, Doctor."

"And when will that be?" But Del gave no reply.

It was only when the other aliens had gone that the Doctor allowed himself to drop his head. He breathed heavily, almost panting. How much more of this could he take before he couldn't stop himself from regenerating?

"Rose," he whispered desperately, "please be safe."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I suddenly feel the need to clarify that this takes place during s2 (obviously) but more specifically before the TSP/TIP episode arch, probably right before. Also, I have no idea what withholding regeneration is like, so that was creative license. Message me if Classic Who says otherwise, since I wouldn't know.


	4. Rose?

He didn’t know how long it was before he saw Del and the Iotas again. He had no need for meals or bathroom breaks, and his sleep schedule had long ago been disrupted, so with his sense of time’s passage totally askew he was completely unable to tell if it were days or weeks or even months. It was terribly boring.

Besides the aching pain, of course. That was excitement he could do without.

Time passed slowly, though he didn’t know how much of it did. He toyed with the idea of marking time by counting, but without being able to tell how much time was passing, there was no guarantee he would count accurately. His internal clock was rendered unreliable.

So he hung there for an undetermined long time, his back hurting and his arms straining, and he tried not to think about what could be happening to Rose.

Finally Del returned. The Doctor was annoyed at the way he was a bit pleased, but he couldn’t help being hardwired to crave companionship. Even being tortured meant he wasn’t alone. Solitary confinement would destroy him.

“You’re back,” the Doctor noted. “And you’ve brought Thing 1 and Thing 2, I see? Lovely.”

Iota-843 wrote something down and the Doctor rolled his eyes. “Hello to you too.”

“Let’s get down to business, yes?” Del said, unamused.

“To defeat the-” Iota-854 began his work and the rest of the sentence was lost.

This session seemed to last longer than the first, or maybe that was just because it reopened previous wounds. By the end, the Doctor knew his back was nothing but an uneven pattern of crisscrossed lines. His trousers were heavy with blood.

He breathed in as deeply as he could without moving his torso. His head hung low to his chest and his eyes were closed. The back of his throat was raw.

Del peered at him as Iota-843’s writing slowed. “I think that’s enough for now,” said Del. “We can’t use this one up too quickly. You know what a fuss there was last time.”

The Doctor raised his head- slowly, with great effort, every muscle in his neck straining- and glared at Del with bleary eyes. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. He looked almost feral.

Del raised an eyebrow. It was unclear whether he was impressed. “We’ll see,” he said to himself after a moment’s consideration. And they left.

The Doctor closed his eyes again as the door closed. But though there was no noise, something made him open his eyes again. Through the door’s window he saw a glimpse of blonde hair and a pink shirt.

“Rose!” he tried to call, but his voice was used up and he could hardly make a sound.

Yet she turned to him and their eyes met. He stared at her, begging- for what? To help him? To escape? He wasn’t sure.

She looked back at him sadly, and he must have blinked, because she was gone. Was she anything but the product of his tired brain playing tricks on him? Was she ever really there?

He hoped not. He hoped Rose was far, far away from this place and its inhabitants. She had to be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Pain-induced hallucination? Dimension-hopping!Rose, accidentally going too far in the time stream and coming to this moment but being unable to help him because it would change the timeline? It won’t be relevant later, so you decide.


	5. The Worst

There were more visits. The Doctor lost count. He lost track of everything. The sessions blurred into a mess of blood and screams; the time between them took forever whether it was hours or months.

He would have been able to tell roughly how much time had passed by the formation of scar tissue, but his injuries were never allowed to get to that point. Each new lash ripped through several old gashes at once, making mincemeat of his flesh and drawing hideous sounds out of him.

But though he gasped and winced and screamed, there was one thing the Doctor refused to give Del: he would not cry.

Iota-843 left disappointed at the end of each session, but the Doctor knew Del was merely intrigued. He sensed a patience in Del that did not bode well for the Doctor's future. Del would be able to wait forever to get what he wanted.

If only forever would hurry up. Each second, to his dulled senses, was an eternity. Every part of him ached for an end to his torment. If he could give the Learners what they wanted, maybe it would be over.

Except there was nothing they wanted, nothing but this. They weren't trying to extract secrets or coerce him into doing anything, which made him helpless in his inability to strike a bargain. They just wanted to see how much he could take.

The answer? He wasn't sure, but it couldn't be much more. After one particularly brutal attack from Iota-854, the Doctor felt the strange tingling that generally preceded regeneration.

"No," he gasped with what breath he could draw, and he shoved the feeling away.

He could not regenerate. It wouldn't help him, for one thing; it'd only prolong the time he spent in these chains. And then, much more significantly, there was the matter of the consequences for Rose if he slipped up.

So as he grimaced now he prayed the Learners hadn't seen any evidence of regeneration beginning—a spark or glow, anything they might recognize and interpret as interfering with the experiment. Anything that might prompt them to make good on Del's threat to punish Rose.

He would die if they kept pushing him this way, but that was okay. He'd had hundreds of years he ought to be satisfied with. As long as Rose didn't pay for his mistakes. She deserved to get out of here. She had to. It was his fault she was here at all.

Which might be why the Doctor took the news so badly when it came.

"Rose Tyler is deceased," Del told him.

He couldn't have heard right. They'd promised her safety! How dare—?

He was straining against his bonds without noticing. "You—! She…"

Suddenly the Doctor sagged, every bit of energy draining from him. If not for his chains, he would have collapsed. He blinked slowly, as though trying to clear the fogginess of sleep from his eyes. Finally he whispered, "How?"

It was only one word, but within was contained anguish that could swallow star systems and rage that had destroyed planets. It was a lament and a threat, an explosion of grief disguised as anger disguised as a simple need to know. Or perhaps "disguised" wasn't right; it was all these things and more, wrapped in many layers and every one of them hurt. The word was an expression of disbelief and a question and a promise of vengeance, but most of all it was the beginning of another, unspoken question: _How was he supposed to go on without her?_

"Peacefully," Del answered. "We kept our side of the bargain. She did not suffer; she lived out the rest of her days in good health. It is just that you have been here for nearly 70 years. Rose Tyler died at the age of 88."

Everything was still. Silent. Something—maybe two somethings—deep inside the Doctor seemed to fracture and the world broke apart. He was numb and dying at once. She was gone. She'd left him.

No, that wasn't fair. He'd left her. Betrayed her. Abused the trust she'd had in him. He'd brought Rose here and she'd spent the rest of her life as a hostage. She had never seen her mum again. Never gotten to live the life he'd stolen from her.

Rose was dead and he was to blame. The Doctor's hearts shattered irreparably. At last, the Learners had broken him.

He cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So did I. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for writing this.


	6. Rose??? (the sequel)

He had no energy. He had nothing. The Doctor dangled limply from his chains and made no effort to move in any way. He would not speak.

He just cried. He sobbed, wailing sounds that were worse than the screams usually echoing from this room. He had a lost, deadened look in his eyes.

Now there was no reason for him to hold back regeneration, since the Learners no longer had a hostage to hold against him. But he felt no reason to regenerate, either. Why should he? What did he have left to live for? What was out there for him?

Nothing. The universe was empty. Why explore on his own when, for a brief and shining moment, he hadn’t had to be alone? How could he go back?

How could he go _on?_

So he hung motionless, battered inside and out, and then one day the Learners returned with the whip. He barely even noticed. He stared dully at the floor and he did not react at all when he was hit, not when it drew blood or when it tore through flesh. He made no sound throughout the session.

He just looked blankly ahead, eyes half-closed with one name on his mind. He had no room to think about the physical agony he was in. It didn’t register compared to what he was feeling inside.

Grief numbed him. It struck him dumb and left him speechless, motionless, and helpless. He was no longer even capable of tears. His body felt nothing. All the pain was in his mind now.

The Learners returned several other times, but with the same results. Iota-854 could not get a response out of the Doctor. Iota-843 was very interested. Del merely smiled in that eerie way of his.

The Doctor ignored them all. He wasn’t in the room with them. He was surrounded by stars and planets, spinning through the universe with his Bad Wolf at his side, and her smile made the light around them seem dim. But she faded and left him in the void alone, calling for her to no avail, stranded and abandoned.

He’d known of course that he would lose her eventually. She was human, after all. She could never hope to be around as long as he would be. She’d promised him “forever” but they both knew she’d meant “as long as I can.” But they were meant to have had more than this. He hadn’t even gotten to tell her…

There was so much they were supposed to have gotten to do together. So many places she’d never see. So many people she’d never meet. So many things he’d never tell her. She was gone and he wasn’t expecting it yet. He wasn’t ready. He never could have been ready, but he had thought he would have time to prepare.

Time. A Time Lord with a time machine and he still ran out of time. A delightful, awful irony.

Rose had deserved so much better. She’d deserved the world, and in trying to give it to her he’d gotten her a prison and a slow death.

At least it was peaceful. Not everyone associated with him got that. She’d lived out her life. But alone and imprisoned and without him.

He tried not to picture how she must have looked when she realized he wasn’t going to be coming to rescue her, but her face swam behind his eyelids. He had failed her.

His eyes were closed, but--

“Doctor?”

He knew that voice, could pick it out of six and a half billion in a heartbeat. His eyes flew open.

“Rose?” His voice cracked. “Oh, thank goodness. You’re alive!”

But he looked at her and something was wrong. She was crying. Why was Rose crying?

“Doctor?” she repeated. Something in her tone set him on edge. There was pain in the way she said his name, pain and doubt, and it cut through him like Iota-854’s whip.

“Rose?” He was getting nervous.

“Doctor, you...you left me,” she said, and fresh tears spilled over her lashes. She looked at him like she wasn’t sure she knew him.

“No,” he whispered, horrified. He pulled back instinctively, driven away by the accusation.

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him with hurt in her beautiful eyes. He knew she blamed him. She couldn’t possibly blame him more than he did himself.

But he couldn’t have done anything, couldn’t she see that? He pulled against the chains to get as close to her as possible.

“Rose, no, I—”

She shook her head. “You didn’t come. I thought you would come, but you never came. Day after day after day. Do you know how long I waited for you, Doctor?”

Her voice broke like his hearts. “And you didn’t come.”

“I would have, I couldn’t, I—” The Doctor pleaded, but abruptly he stopped making excuses. She was right. He had failed her. He had let her die afraid and lonely and miserable, and now he was going to end the same way.

Rose stretched out a hand, almost but not quite reaching him. He strained toward her even though he knew by now that she was not, could not be, real. He would give anything to be able to hold her hand one more time.

“Rose,” he began, but she faded away. Nothing but a dream. Gone again. A hallucination produced by his own mind in an attempt to either comfort or torment him. He couldn’t tell which, but he wasn’t particularly comforted.

And now he was by himself once more. Rose wasn’t there; she never had been. His head dropped with the weight of disappointment and guilt and loss and blame. He found he could cry once more, but it was silent now. There was no one to hear him anyway. He was alone again, as usual.

He would never see Rose again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: any Doomsday parallels in this chapter are cruel and intentional. Sorry.


	7. Rose! (the conclusion to the trilogy but not the last chapter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a few days late. I was not expecting this to be so long. Also NaNoWriMo started. Anyway I hope you enjoy the update!

_Earlier…_

Rose woke up in a room that looked like it belonged in some posh hotel. She frowned. That didn’t seem right. She’d been in the TARDIS, and then there was a distress signal, and—

“Doctor!” she exclaimed, and ran to the door. It was locked, which she had pretty much expected.

Okay, so they were captured, probably by aliens, with unknown intentions. Not good. But they’d gotten through worse. The Doctor would come through again like he always did.

Reassured, Rose sat back down on the bed and had a proper look around. As cages went, it wasn’t a bad one. In fact it was probably nicer than her own flat, though she wouldn’t be telling anyone that. There were all the basic conveniences she’d need—a bed, a bathroom, even a bookshelf and a lamp on the bedside table. There was no food or kitchen, though.

Just as the thought occurred to her, the door beeped and opened. Rose looked over quickly.

A girl came in with a tray and an apologetic look. “Rose Tyler? Do I have the right room?”

“How many prisoners have you got?” Rose asked, raising her eyebrows. Were she and the Doctor just the latest additions to a collection?

But the girl blushed and admitted, “I guess this is the place. Um, do you want to eat?”

Rose was about to refuse when her stomach reminded her how long it had been since she’d last eaten. She wondered how long she’d been out. “What is it?”

The girl showed her the tray. It seemed to be ordinary Earth food, a meal that could’ve been bought from any shop in London. Rose poked at it. “Anything… alien in it?”

The other girl laughed and then covered her mouth like she shouldn’t have done that. “Oh, no, miss, of course not. We have studied your species carefully. This should fill your needs adequately.”

“Studied?” Rose repeated as she ate.

A flush spread across the girl’s face. “I shouldn’t say too much about it. Delta-Ten-Three-Nine will be along soon to explain.”

“What’s your name?” Rose felt a bit guilty for not thinking to find out sooner.

“I’m Omega-Eight-Nine-Zero.” The other girl seemed embarrassed to admit it, as though it was shameful, a mark of low rank. Maybe it was. It seemed unkind to call her a name she didn’t like.

“That’s a mouthful, innit? Could I call you Meg?”

Omega-890 shrugged, but Rose thought she liked it. “If you’d prefer.”

“Meg, where am I? The man I was with, the Doctor, where’s he?”

But Meg retreated into herself at the question. “The Delta will explain,” she said, and ducked out of the room before Rose could ask any more questions. She took the tray with her, which was disappointing.

Rose waited for the Delta’s arrival. In the meantime, she flipped through a few of the books left for her. Not quite her type, but she supposed it was better than staring at the walls. She chose one at random and was a few chapters in when the door opened again.

“Hello, Rose Tyler. I am Delta-Ten-Three-Nine, or Del if you’d like, and on behalf of the Learners I welcome you to our facility. We hope to make your stay here comfortable.”

“Where’s the Doctor?” she demanded.

Del laughed softly. “He’s...around. You’ll hear from him.” Somehow, this wasn’t comforting. There was an unpleasant glint in Del’s eyes that made Rose wary.

“So the Learners,” she began, “who’re they, then?”

“Our race is that of scientists and students, pursuers of knowledge. We require information about your friend, and your presence ensures his cooperation.”

Rose understood what he was saying: she was a hostage. “What sort of information?”

“Nothing much,” said Del dismissively. “And you are irrelevant to our studies. We have already completed our surveillance and experiments on your kind.”

“Experiments.” The word gave her a sick feeling.

Del ignored her. “If our studies go well, your time here should be pleasant.”

“How long will this take?” But he was already leaving and she didn’t get an answer.

***

Boredom. Rose hadn’t realized how dull life without the Doctor was. To be fair, she generally wasn’t alone in a locked room for days on end. The only other person she ever saw was Meg, but she refused to speak to Rose. Maybe she’d gotten told off for speaking out of turn.

It wasn’t the worst setup, but it was tremendously boring.

Then Rose noticed Meg watching her almost pityingly. More so than usual, anyway.

“What?”

To her surprise, Meg actually answered. “They’re waking him today,” she confided.

“What do you mean, waking him?” Rose frowned.

“The Doctor...that’s what he’s called? He’s been kept asleep until now to monitor vitals and confirm some basics. But he’s being revived today.”

“And... why’s that a reason for you to look at me like someone’s died?” Shouldn’t that be a good thing? The Doctor was awake, so now he could get her. This explained why he hadn’t come yet. Why did Meg act like this was the worst thing that could happen?

Meg flinched. “You’ll see,” she whispered, and fled the room.

About twenty minutes later Rose understood. A scream pierced the air, muffled only slightly by walls and distance. Somewhere in this building, someone or something was hurting the Doctor. And she was stuck here.

It was like being sent away from the Gamestation again. She was powerless to help the Doctor as he suffered beyond her reach. And this time she had no TARDIS. The sounds that reached her made her chest ache.

The Doctor was the strongest person she knew. What could be making him produce such noises? She couldn’t begin to imagine what was happening to him. No, that wasn’t true. She could imagine all sorts of horrors. She didn’t _want_ to.

It seemed inconceivable that earlier Rose had been complaining of boredom. By the third scream, her fingernails were bitten past the quick and her cheeks were wet with helpless, frightened tears.

But there was no fourth scream. Shaking, Rose sat down, covering her mouth with her hands. Had they stopped, or was he no longer capable even of screaming?

The terror of uncertainty was almost worse than the horror of hearing. Rose waited for days to hear something, anything that would let her know he was alive—but Meg would no longer look at her and Del did not return.

Rose hated it here. She was being cared for while somewhere the Doctor was being tortured. The silence was unbearable, but there was no one to talk to and nothing to do but read. Days dragged on in an agonizing emptiness.

When the screams started again, she wondered how she ever could have wished to hear them again. She clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn’t block out much. And anyway, not hearing the sounds wouldn’t change the fact that they were being drawn from the Doctor at that moment.

 _Finally, an answer to the tree in a forest,_ she thought absently.

Rose was expecting the awful sounds to stop like they had last time, but they went on and on. What were they doing? What kind of information did they need from him, and how were they trying to get it?

The days went on. Rose fell into a sort of routine. Meg showed up with a tray of food, Rose ate, Meg left, Rose stared at the wall or tried to read or more likely lay in bed dreading what the rest of the day might bring, at some point Meg would return, and after eating Rose would sleep. Or try to.

The only variation from day to day was whether the screams came. Waiting for them was terrible, but every time they came she hated them worse than the silence. There was no consistency in when to expect the next round, so they could come at any moment. It was a life of constant tension, and the most helpless Rose had ever felt. He was so close and she couldn’t get to him.

She didn’t think there could be anything worse than the sounds she was hearing. She was wrong.

About a month into their captivity, the Doctor made a new sound that chilled Rose to her core: he was crying. Sobbing. Wailing.

The Doctor did not cry. It wasn’t that she thought he was incapable, or that he didn’t have reason to—the Doctor had so many reasons to cry it hurt to think about—but he didn’t give in. That was one of the things she liked best about the Doctor, that he never gave up beneath the weight of all he carried.

And now he was crying. He hadn’t cried when facing the Dalek in Utah, or when he’d absorbed the Time Vortex from her and regenerated as a result, or when he’d been too late for Reinette…

She had to get to him. So what if she got caught? There was no point in waiting here for the rest of her life. The Doctor needed her. Rose was going to find him, and nothing would stop her.

So the next time Meg came without looking at her, Rose seized her chance and darted out of the room. Before Meg could come after her, she slammed the door and hoped it had locked Meg in.

Rose ran down a hallway. The Doctor had been silent for a couple of days, but she still knew roughly where he was based on where his sounds had come from. She found a staircase and raced up a flight.

Upon bursting through the doors, Rose paused to read the label on the door opposite.

“Confiscations,” she mused. It sounded promising. She made a mental note to return after finding the Doctor, because no matter what was back there, he was the higher priority. He would always be the highest priority.

She was lucky. She found his door quickly. The doors in this place weren’t locked from the outside, so she was able to go straight in.

The Doctor hung from the ceiling, his head low and his back and lower half bloodied. He hadn’t seen her yet because his eyes were closed. He looked every minute of his nine hundred-plus years.

“Doctor,” she gasped, tears in her eyes at the sight of him—so beaten, so unlike _her_ Doctor. He was missing something key, some vitality. A spark of something essential to him.

At her voice he opened his eyes and for a moment there was a faint glimmer of hope, like he was allowing himself a few seconds of optimism, but then his face crumpled worse than before.

“No, not again.” His hoarse whisper struck Rose like a slap. “Please. Not again.”

“Doctor, what…” She stepped forward and he flinched away. Her vision blurred.

It would have been less hurtful had he yelled at her. She reached out an arm, desperate, and he shrank into himself. He couldn’t even look at her.

What had they done to him? He was acting like he was afraid of her. How could anyone make that happen?

Impulsively she cupped his face in her hands, and his face went through a rapid series of expressions—grief, fear, others she couldn’t quite pin down—but then his eyes widened.

“Tactile…” he muttered, and then looked at her beseechingly. “Rose? You’re… real?”

“Of course I’m real,” she said soothingly, though it was hard to speak. She’d ask him about that later. “Let’s get you down from there. Chains… Where’s your sonic?”

The Confiscations room flashed in her mind.

“Doctor, I’ve got to go, but I’m coming back for you, alright?” She spoke softly, hoping to reassure him, but he looked panicked.

“Don’t leave,” he begged, and her heart squeezed at the vulnerability in his voice. “How will I know you were ever here?”

Rose thought quickly and then pulled a loose thread from her sleeve. “Here,” she said, and reached up to put it in his hand. The eight-inch height difference made it difficult, but she pulled it off after a few tries through sheer determination. “Hold on to that and I’ll be right back.”

She was very aware of his eyes on her back as she left, clinging to her like he wanted to hold her there through force of will alone.

Rose hurried back to the door by the stairs. Yes, this was the place. She slipped inside, careful not to let the door close behind her.

Jackpot. Trench (with the sonic in its pocket), jacket, shirt—all in a neatly labelled bin at the foot of the TARDIS. She took only the sonic—she’d bring the bin into the TARDIS when they were leaving—and ran back to the room where she’d left the Doctor.

He was still there, and she wasn’t sure why that was a surprise. She was just on edge, expecting something to go wrong at any moment. Her adrenaline levels were so high she felt she could probably jump twenty feet in the air; every sense was cranked to the highest possible pitch.

“I’m back,” she said as she entered, but there was no need. He’d been watching the door ever since she had left.

The Doctor was clutching her thread like a lifeline. His relief upon seeing her return was written in every line of his face. She only realized how tense he’d been when every muscle relaxed enough for the change to be visible.

“Right, what setting?” she asked, brandishing the sonic. He didn’t seem ready to answer, so she fiddled with it randomly in an imitation of his usual manner, and somehow it worked. If she hadn’t been so scared, she might have laughed.

The chains opened and the Doctor fell toward her. Rose stumbled under his weight, but he couldn’t support himself. He had been hanging by his arms, virtually unmoving, for a month. She draped one of his arms over her shoulder and winced as he cried out.

“Sorry! Sorry,” she said, but he shook his head.

“Just go.” His voice, though strained, allowed no argument. So they staggered out of the cell, Rose trying to jostle him as little as possible.

“Only a little farther,” she murmured. “Nearly there.”

She kept up a steady stream of encouragement as they went, and though he didn’t respond she knew he appreciated it. His forehead glistened with a sheen of sweat from his efforts, though Rose was still supporting as much of his weight as she could.

The hallway seemed much longer this time than on Rose’s first two trips, but at last they reached the Confiscations room. Opening the door without dropping the Doctor or the sonic was tricky and took some manipulation, but Rose managed it and she brought them inside.

The Doctor inhaled sharply when he saw the TARDIS. He pressed forward on his own and fell against its doors. He lay his face against its wood for a moment. Rose took the time to lift the bin.

“In you go,” she prompted. “Time to go home.”

The doors opened with their comforting, peculiar creak that Rose had missed so much. Both she and the Doctor drew in a deep breath as they entered. It felt like being born again—a phrase Rose had always scoffed at until now. Return to the TARDIS meant safety, even though running with the Doctor meant danger.

It was worth it. They were back. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, together. As it should be.

But he was broken.


	8. fluff, finally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long to get done. As an apology, have this extra-long, extra-fluffy chapter to make up for the angst and delay.

He was leaning on the console too heavily, and she had to help him pull the switches that were too far, that were out of his reach, that he could not get to without straining. She saw in his face the hurt he would not admit to, and so she piloted the TARDIS as best as she could in response to his silent gestures and wordless pleas.

 

They landed at Jackie’s flat, which surprised Rose. But the TARDIS was telepathic, so maybe it had picked up on her desperation to go home, to get someplace familiar and safe where they could wait and recover.

 

“Doctor?” Rose grabbed his arm and he turned to look at her. “We’re here. Let’s go, let’s get you looked at, hmm?”

 

“Don’t need to be looked at,” he protested, but it was feeble, lacking his usual spiritedness fierceness. “Meant to go to New Earth, remember that? The hospital there, now that would do nicely. Dunno how we ended up here instead.”

 

He scowled at the monitor, but Rose thought she knew better. He was only pretending to be upset with the TARDIS; he knew full well he had brought them here deliberately. Or so she thought. Maybe he’d done it subconsciously? Or had she interfered? Maybe the TARDIS’s consciousness had done it on its own? It was alive; maybe it knew what Rose knew: the Doctor needed help from his family, not those cat people with questionable morals.

 

“Come inside,” she urged him. “Mum’ll know what to do.”

 

***

 

The longer the Doctor spent away from that place and in Rose’s company, the stronger he became. He was able, by now, to stand and walk on his own. He picked up his discarded clothing and opened the TARDIS doors himself. He tried not to let Rose see how badly his back and shoulders ached at the movement.

 

He doubted he was fooling her, but he was too tired to care. She could think anything of him and it wouldn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that she was alive.

 

Alive!

 

He beamed even as his legs burned from disuse after so long in captivity. His trousers were stiff with dried blood and his cheeks stung from the unfamiliar expression. He was in pain and he was overwhelmingly happy. Rose Tyler, his Rose, Rose was alive and she was with him. Nothing could possibly take that knowledge, that joy, from him.

 

Then he tripped on the top step on the way to the flat, and his elation leaked away slowly. She was with him now, but would she stay? Could he expect her to stay with him now, when he was in this state?

 

“Doctor? You alright there?” Rose was right behind him, and the worry in her voice soothed the worries in his mind.

 

“Course I am, I’m always alright, me,” he said, with an attempt at a grin. He knew it fell flat, but he needed the normalcy. He needed things to go back to what they had been before. He was supposed to be strong and brave; he was supposed to be able to save her. He was supposed to be there for her.

 

“Lean on me,” she commanded him, and he obeyed with secret relief. Rose led him to her mum’s door and knocked sharply. Bam bam bam bam!

 

The door swung open and Jackie’s smile faltered when she saw the look on Rose’s face. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Doctor, what’s the matter with you?”

 

“Mum, would you just let us in before you start interrogating us?” Rose said bitingly, but the Doctor knew he was starting to lean a little more heavily on her and it couldn’t be very comfortable for Rose.

 

“Well alright then, no hello,” Jackie grumbled, yet the Doctor noticed she let the two of them enter very quickly and rushed to make them comfortable. “Not like you two go gallivanting off and only pop in when you need me, oh no, not you. That’s not how it goes--”

 

Jackie cut off when she saw the Doctor stumble toward the couch. He needed to sit down, right now, before he could fall over and embarrass himself in front of-- before he could embarrass himself. She looked to Rose, who was biting her lip.

 

“Rose? Sweetheart, what’s happened? What’s wrong, where did you go this time? Is everyone alright?” Jackie swept toward Rose, who fell into her mother’s arms.

 

“Mum,” Rose whispered, and the Doctor looked away to give them a moment to themselves. But he had to look back when he heard something that tore him to pieces worse than what had been done to him in that cell. Rose’s voice was hitching and then it cracked and broke as she said again, “Mum. Oh god, Mum.”

 

Jackie held Rose tightly, like he wished he could, held her and whispered meaningless comforting noises to her as Rose cried into Jackie’s shoulder. The Doctor saw this, and he watched from the couch, and he hated himself for not being able to be the one to help her. He hated his helplessness, and he hated his cowardice, and he hated his intrusion into this scene and into her life.

 

He’d always felt out of place here, just a bit, in this flat that was such a solid reminder of all he had stolen her from or stolen from her. This room and everything in it was evidence of the aspects of her life he didn’t generally care to consider, the domestic side, the part of Rose’s life he could never share. Jackie’s flat was proof that Rose was more than her travels with him, whereas he was nothing more than his travels with or without her.

 

The Doctor had only Rose and the TARDIS, and while he was with the Learners he had had neither, and that had destroyed him. Now he allowed himself a moment to soak in the fact that he had both back. The TARDIS was outside, and Rose was here, and everything was okay.

 

Except that Rose was crying, and that every molecule in his body was screaming that he had suppressed a regeneration and should really be resting.

 

At the thought, his body spasmed and the Tyler women broke apart to see him gasping for breath. “Doctor!” Rose yelled. “Mum, help me get him to bed!”

 

He wanted to argue that he could get there on his own, but he tried to stand and found all of his muscles seized up at once and he absolutely could not. He let Rose and Jackie take him into the room where he had recovered from regenerating into this form. It seemed only fitting.

 

As soon as he was under the covers, he fell asleep. It wasn’t in his control. He could tell Rose wanted to examine his injuries, check how badly he was hurt, but he was losing consciousness and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t keep his eyes open, couldn’t stay with her…

 

***

 

Rose watched the Doctor’s eyes slide shut, and she was hoping to see his forehead unclench, but no such luck. His face remained tense and pained, and then Jackie was there to urge her into the other room to sit with her.

 

“D’you want to talk about it?” Jackie asked softly, careful not to wake the Doctor in the next room. “What’s the matter with him? Where were you?”

 

“We were in the TARDIS at first, ‘bout a month ago,” Rose began. She kept her voice down as well, mostly because she was scared that if she tried to speak normally her voice would break and she didn’t want to worry her mum any more than she already had. “And there was this signal, a distress call or something, and you know how the Doctor is with those…”

 

“So you went after it,” Jackie finished. “But…”

 

She trailed off and let Rose pick up the story. “It was a trap, and we walked right into it, Mum, they’d been waiting for him. I was… I was useless, I was just collateral. They barely acknowledged me at all, I was just stuck in this room on my own, and I could hear him. He was screaming, he--”

 

Here her voice did break, but she couldn’t stop. “He was screaming, they were torturing him, Mum. I don’t even know what they were doing in there, he wouldn’t say, but he was crying when I found him. What… what could make the Doctor cry?”

 

Rose wasn’t sure when she’d started crying, but her cheeks were wet and her nose was running. She swiped at her face halfheartedly and looked at her mother desperately. “What did they do?” she whispered, in whatever strangled voice she could manage.

 

Jackie scooped her daughter into a hug, and they clung to each other tightly. “You’re okay,” she said into Rose’s hair. “You got away. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

 

Rose melted into her mother’s arms for a moment, but then she pulled away. “But what about the Doctor? What about him? Is he okay? There’s so much I don’t know about him... I don’t even know if he’ll survive this. I don’t know if he can change his face again. I don’t know what happened to him in there, and I-- I can’t--”

 

She burst into sobs and this time she let Jackie hold her. She cried in fear and relief and sheer overwhelmed emotional overload. She was home. She had the Doctor. She had her mum. Rose finally let herself think the one thing she’d been terrified to let herself consider during her time with the Learners: Everything would be fine.

 

But how could it, with the Doctor unconscious and bloody and broken? She didn’t want to think it, but it could not be avoided. He could barely walk himself to the door. Rose had gotten the two of them away from that awful place, but he could still die here. She did not want him to die, to regenerate again and leave her to get used to another one. She wanted him.

 

Rose stood, disentangling herself from Jackie’s embrace. She ignored the look Jackie gave her, one loaded with meaning and maternal concern, and she went back to the Doctor’s side. She sat on the bed next to him and took his hand gently. She didn’t want to wake him; she was certain he needed the sleep, but it was terrible to see him like this again. The last time he’d been passed out in this bed, it had been after he had absorbed the entire Time Vortex from her.

 

He had died for her. And that was how he had become this face, her Doctor. He had laid in this spot and woken to save her from a Christmas tree. Rose would not be the reason he interrupted his healing sleep again. So she was very careful not to disturb him as she laced her fingers through his.

 

Rose looked at their hands, clasped as they often were on their travels, and tears welled up in her eyes again. She had taken so long to adjust to the feel of different hands in hers. She didn’t want him to change again. Not when it felt like they were so close to something now.

 

She lifted his hand to her mouth. “Please,” she whispered against his fingers. “Stay with me.”

 

***

 

The Doctor was dreaming, but he didn’t know it yet.

 

This time, he was in Rose’s place, and she was in his. Or so he assumed. He wasn’t sure of the details of his surroundings. The only thing that mattered was that Rose was out there, and something was making her scream, and he had to get to her--

 

And then the scene changed, and he was back in his chains. Rose was dead, they told him, and it was true. She never came, he was alone, she was dead and gone and it was his fault. He would be there until he died and it didn’t matter at all, nothing did, because Rose wasn’t there. There was no chance of saving her, no way to fix this, no possibility of making this right, she was gone forever--

 

The room dissolved and reformed, and now the Doctor was in his TARDIS but on his own. Somehow, he had gotten free from the Learners, but Rose was gone, and so what was the point? He landed it in a random location and sat at the console for hours, motionless.

 

But his subconscious would not let him rest. He was at Jackie’s flat now, like he had been after regenerating, and Rose herself was sitting beside him. She looked like she had not slept nearly enough for days, but she was as beautiful as he had ever seen her. He was afraid to say anything lest he shatter the illusion and break the dream’s spell. Rose’s eyes were on his hands, and it was then that he realized she was holding onto his hand.

 

He smelled Jackie’s cooking coming from somewhere in the flat. A car honked outside. The sheets were soft and the pillow was fluffy. This was an incredibly detailed dream, unless…

 

“Rose?” he croaked.

 

“Doctor!” Her face lit up. “You’re awake, you’re alive, Doctor, you’re back!”

 

“Think so. Yeah.” He cracked a smile and realized how dry his mouth was. “Don’t suppose there’s any chance your favorite Time Lord could get a bit of a drink round here, is there?”

 

“Mum!” Rose hollered. “Doctor’s--”

 

“I heard him, I heard him,” Jackie said, bustling in with a glass of water. “Wakes up, this one, scaring us all half to death with that nonsense, and what’s he do? First thing out of his mouth, he’s making demands Oi, all right, then.”

 

“Thanks,” he said, downing it with his free hand. He would not let go of Rose’s hand. He swallowed the water like he had not had a drink in years, and he wondered how much time he’d spent unconscious. “How long…”

 

“Four days,” Rose said, and it sounded like every minute had been a year. “You’ve been lying here, sleeping, for four days. We thought you were--”

 

She swallowed the rest of the sentence. He knew what she had been about to say.

 

“I’m fine, Rose, really.”

 

“Don’t tell me that!” she snapped, and it was suddenly very obvious that she was Jackie’s daughter. “Don’t you dare tell me that, Doctor. Because I know how I found you, and I don’t know how you got that way. But that was not fine, and you’re not fine now.”

 

He stared at Rose, and she stared him down. He submitted. “Okay.”

 

“Okay? What part of this--” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I have one question.”

 

“Only one?” The feeble joke died on his lips. “What is it?”

 

“Are you going to regenerate?” she asked, the words jumbling together in her rush to get them out. She hurried on before he could answer. “Because if you are then that’s okay, I’ll still travel with you, you know, it’s just I’d like some advance warning this time before you blow up the flat and run off to--”

 

“No,” he said over her rambling. “I’ll still be me.”

 

Rose deflated. “Oh. Okay. Good. That’s good.”

 

“Need anything?” Jackie asked in the silence that followed. “Tea? Sandwich? Coffee? I think I’ve got some leftover pudding somewhere, you missed Guy Fawkes, y’know, that’d be a treat… Nice reward for not dying…”

 

The Doctor was strongly reminded of his last time recuperating here. He wondered if he’d find an orange in his pocket next. “Tea’d be lovely, yeah. Good old tea. Remember last time? Cup of tea at the right moment, just what’s needed.”

 

“For an alien, you really are remarkably British, anyone ever tell you that?” Jackie said as she left the room to go put up the tea.

 

“It’s been said, yeah.” He cleared his throat and looked at Rose. “I’m sorry.”

 

“What’ve you got to be sorry for?” She was perplexed, and he could tell, but he needed to apologize.

 

“All of this, it’s my fault. If I hadn’t responded to that signal--”

 

“Then you wouldn’t be the Doctor,” she interrupted. “You had to go after it, ’course you did. That’s part of who you are, it’s as simple as that. You can’t blame yourself for wanting to help someone, Doctor.”

 

“But--”

 

“No.” Her voice was firm, leaving no room to argue with her. Clearly, Rose had thought about this. She had expected this conversation and prepared for it. He felt out-maneuvered, and he liked it. Someone knew him well enough to anticipate his worries. It was strange to feel so cared for. “This isn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself for any of this.”

 

He smiled at her, and her expression softened. He was lost for words, but he hoped some of what he was feeling would somehow make itself known to Rose. She was so good, much too good for him.

 

***

 

“So… back there,” Rose started hesitantly, and he tensed. She hated to press him, but she pushed on anyway. “Do you… d’you want to talk about it? ‘Bout what they’d been doing to you? Doctor, I could hear you. I…”

 

He closed his eyes. Rose winced. He didn’t want to talk about it, obviously, and she could hardly blame him. The idea of discussing what they’d just escaped was making her stomach turn, and she had only been cooped in a room for a month while somewhere he was screaming.

 

The Doctor did not seem to be in the mood to talk, and so she let him sip his tea in silence. Rose watched as he tried not to flinch every time he lifted his hand to his face. She’d seen his torn-up back, and she wished she knew how to help. Instead she was sitting there, useless, letting him pull at broken skin and strained muscles so he could have a drink and pretend everything was fine. It was awful.

 

“Mum, have you still got that sewing kit from Shareen?” Rose asked suddenly.

 

Jackie frowned. “I dunno, I might’ve dumped that ages back, you know you never liked it much.”

 

“Well, could you check?” Rose snapped, and then bit her lip. “Sorry. Please.”

 

Jackie bustled off to dig through the flat. The sewing kit had been a birthday gift from Shareen for Rose’s eleventh birthday, a little set for little fingers, containing a few spools of thread and a needle Jackie immediately declared too sharp and dangerous for her. By the time Rose was allowed to use it, she’d lost interest in it, and so it had probably remained collecting dust somewhere at the back of a closet. Or so Rose hoped. It was entirely possible that Jackie had tossed the entire thing in a bin years ago.

 

Rose would have gone to help Jackie search for the kit, but she refused to consider leaving the Doctor alone. She would have to wait for her mum to find it on her own.

 

The Doctor finished his tea and set the mug down on the bedside table. He settled into his pillows, but he couldn’t hold back a grimace of pain. Rose saw it, and it made her wince in sympathy, but she couldn’t do anything about it until Jackie announced, “Found it!” a few minutes later.

 

“Great, bring it in here,” Rose said, perking up and turning toward the door. Jackie entered, triumphantly brandishing the long-lost gift.

 

“What d’you need a sewing kit for?” Jackie said, suddenly concerned. “Not…?”

 

“Probably, yeah,” Rose muttered as she accepted the kit from Jackie. “C’mon, please be strong enough…”

 

She fumbled with the packaging for a moment before she got it open.

 

“Rose…” the Doctor began protestingly, but she silenced him with a look.

 

“Look, I know we can’t take you to an Earth hospital, but we’ve got to get you taken care of. And if no one else is going to do it, I will. Now let me see.”

 

Reluctantly, he shrugged out of his shirt and rolled over to expose his back. Jackie gasped, and Rose’s stomach plummeted. It was worse than she had thought. She hadn’t really gotten a proper look at him while they were running for their lives.

 

Rose swallowed hard. “S’not that bad,” she lied. “Shouldn’t take too long. D’you want anything, aspirin or something? I know it’s not much, but I think we’re out of ibuprofen and--”

 

“Human aspirin could kill me,” he said. “Just do it.”

 

She breathed deeply and took out the needle. It was absurdly small, meant for child-size fingers and child-scale projects. It was a sewing kit meant for dolls’ dresses, not surgical stitches. It took her ages to thread the needle because her hands started shaking.

 

How could she expect to help anyone while wielding a sharp object in unsteady hands? Rose put the needle down and tried not to cry. Jackie put a hand on her shoulder.

 

“I could do it,” Jackie volunteered. “Let me have that, I’ll do a proper job of it.”

 

But Rose refused. She felt somehow that she needed to be the one to do this. If she had gotten to him sooner, he wouldn’t be in this state now, and so it was her fault. She had to fix her own mistake. She just had to stop trembling first.

 

Jackie sighed. “Sweetie, honestly, you’re not helping him by insisting on sewing up his back when you can’t control your hands. Please just let me do this one thing for you.”

 

Rose wiped at her eyes, probably smearing her makeup all over her face in the process. Wordlessly, she handed the sewing kit to her mother, because she was completely right, and Rose was useless. Helpless and unhelpful.

 

“Thanks, Mum,” she whispered. “Doctor? You alright?”

 

“Just peachy,” he mumbled, face half-buried in the bedsheets. “The woman who slapped me when we first met is now being set loose on me with a sharp object and I can’t see what she’s doing. Yeah, everything’s great.”

 

Rose smiled faintly. “Play nice, you two.” If he could tease Jackie, he must be feeling a bit better. Things couldn’t be that bad.

 

***

 

Things were that bad. The Doctor’s torso felt like it was freezing and burning at the same time, probably a side effect of the suppressed regeneration. The thought of getting stitches now made him want to scream, but he couldn’t do that to Rose.

 

Especially now that he knew she could hear him back there. Had he known then that Rose was being subjected to the sound of him in pain, he could have kept it inside. The Doctor saw in Rose’s face what it had been like for her, hearing him scream. He couldn’t believe the Learners had been that cruel to their hostage. Would it have been so hard for them to keep her out of earshot, or soundproof their doors, or something? Why put Rose through that? He was the subject of their sick experiment, not her.

 

As soon as he was able, he vowed, he would make the Learners regret hurting Rose.

 

For now, though, he was stuck here until his back healed, and for that he needed stitches, and for that he needed Jackie. “Ready,” she said behind him.

 

The next thirty-four minutes and twenty-seven seconds were tremendously uncomfortable. He clenched his jaw and held in a scream. His hands were curled into fists so tightly that his nails were creating marks.

 

“Take my hand,” Rose said after a minute or two of this. He grabbed at the offer and held her hand tightly, squeezing when he felt the need to cry out. Jackie did her work carefully and steadily. She was doing a good job, but stitches without anesthetic was not fun and he’d very much prefer to never need to do this again.

 

When it was over, the Doctor dropped Rose’s hand and saw her wince as she flexed her fingers. His grip had left her fingers bloodless and stiff. He’d been holding on much too hard without realizing it. He had hurt Rose. The blood drained out of his face.

 

“Oh no,” he said, devastated. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“S’alright.” Rose shrugged. “How’s your back?”

 

The Doctor tried to shrug, but he couldn’t bring himself to lest he tear his new stitches. “Oh, you know me. Fit as a fiddle.”

 

Jackie shook her head. “You two are ridiculous. Rose, come on, he needs to sleep this off and he’ll never go to sleep if you keep hovering over him.”

 

Rose gave him a final look before she left the room with Jackie. He didn’t want to see her go; he was terrified of waking up without her by his side. But he was already falling asleep again.

 

***

 

“So… how’ve you been?” Rose asked Jackie as they sat together in the kitchen, drinking their own mugs of tea and trying not to remember what they had just seen and done. “Enjoying the quiet life? Meet anyone nice?”

 

“Oh, you know, same old,” Jackie said dismissively. She lifted her cup to her lips and then set it down quickly to try to disguise the fact that it was shaking in her hands. “Sorry, love, ’scuse me.”

 

She hurried off to wash her hands again. It was the third time in as many minutes that Jackie had disappeared to scrub at her fingers. Rose imagined her mother was still feeling the Doctor’s blood on her fingers, and she wondered if Jackie would bother washing the sheets he was lying on or if they would be tossed.

 

Jackie returned with chapped and reddened fingers. “Really must drop by and get more lotion soon,” she mused. “No hope of sending you lot down with your spaceship, I suppose. Fat lot of good it is to have a teleport machine when you won’t even run errands.”

 

“The TARDIS isn’t a lift, Mum, she’s not meant for popping out to the shop. She wants to explore the stars,” Rose explained.

 

“Like you,” Jackie pointed out. Rose looked at her. “You and the Doctor, you’re just the same. Too good for the ordinary life now, you are. You’d rather race around the universe than spend a week with the normal people back home. But then what, Rose? What happens when it goes wrong? What if you disappear into the sky and this time you don’t come back to me?”

 

“Mum, I’m fine. We’re both fine. This was just a… a sort of accident,” said Rose, trying to reassure her but knowing that Jackie made a good point. What if she hadn’t gotten away from Meg, if she hadn’t found the Doctor and the TARDIS, if she’d been stuck there? What then?

 

“An accident,” Jackie repeated scornfully. “Some accident. Tripping on the stairs, that’s an accident. Kidnapped by aliens and held hostage for some, some… torture experiment thing-- that’s not an accident, Rose, that’s a tragedy. I just want you safe. I just want you home with me, and happy, and not constantly in danger.”

 

“It’s not all like this, though,” said Rose. Her voice took on a dreamy quality. “You should see what’s out there, it’s beautiful. There was this one planet, way out near Altair or something…”

 

For the rest of the evening, Jackie let Rose regale her with tales of her time in the TARDIS. It took their minds off the sleeping Time Lord in the other room.

 

***

 

The Doctor was reliving it all over again. Rose Tyler is deceased. Rose Tyler is deceased. Rose Tyler is deceased.

 

“NO!” he yelled, and he woke up, gasping for air like the protagonist in a cheesy horror movie.

 

She wasn’t there. Panic flooded his mind and hearts. She was gone. It was true, it was real, it wasn’t just a dream. Rose was dead. No.

 

His breaths came quicker and his heart rate sped up. No no no. It could not be that Rose was really dead, not after they had escaped. Hadn’t they gotten to the TARDIS? She’d saved him. They had gotten away. How could she be dead?

 

But she wasn’t there.

 

He was about to begin a proper meltdown when suddenly there she was. Rose. Alive and well, almost certainly doing better than he was at the moment. Rose.

 

“Rose,” he whimpered, and he hated how pitiful he sounded but had no control over it. “Rose.”

 

“Doctor?” He heard the concern in her voice as she rushed to the bed. “Doctor, s’alright, I'm here.”

 

“You're here,” the Doctor mumbled. He looked around, as the adrenaline rush faded, and realized where he was. Of course she was here. How could he have gotten to this place without Rose?

 

“I'm here,” she repeated. “Right here. I'm not going anywhere.”

 

She took his hand, and they clung to each other. “Go back to sleep, Doctor,” she told him.

 

“Promise you'll stay?” It was selfish, but he felt he was probably entitled to a little selfishness by now.

 

“Forever,” said Rose.

 

***

 

Rose kept her word as long as she was able. She stayed with him while he slept, determined to not leave before he woke up. But eventually she found herself unable to keep her eyes open.

 

She couldn't leave the Doctor. Still, she needed to sleep. The solution was obvious. Rose settled gingerly into the bed beside him, careful not to jostle him awake.

 

“Just for a minute,” she told herself, and closed her eyes.

 

***

 

The Doctor opened his eyes. The bed felt different than it had when he'd fallen asleep. He rolled over, careful not to pull at his stitches.

 

Rose lay next to him, sleeping and peaceful. Her hair had fallen over her face and her breath was disturbing it, back and forth in a soothing rhythm. The Doctor realized he was staring and hurriedly looked away.

 

But he couldn't keep his eyes off of her. He reached out and smoothed the hair out of her face. She looked so calm in sleep, so unlike the worried expression he'd seen while she was tending to him. He wished he could stop worrying her. He wished he could keep her safe and content and happy with him.

 

“I love you,” he whispered, as softly as he could. But she opened her eyes sleepily anyway.

 

“You say something?” Rose murmured, still half-asleep. It didn't seem like she would remember any of this later.

 

“Shh,” he said, pressing a light kiss to her forehead. “Everything is fine. Sleep. I have you.”

 

And he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review... I'd love to hear what you thought about this. I know it took a while, but I'm really glad with how it turned out and relieved to have finished it. I want to hear from you!


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